


Negotiator

by infinitecompositions



Series: Padawan Maul AU [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: AU, Ahsoka Returns to the Order, Everybody Lives, Fix It, Gen, POV: Mace Windu, Padawan Maul, no order 66
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:14:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27354826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infinitecompositions/pseuds/infinitecompositions
Summary: Ahsoka returns with a crash, much like her former Master. She leaves with a deal, not unlike her grandmaster.
Relationships: Ahsoka Tano & Jedi Council, Darth Maul & Ahsoka Tano
Series: Padawan Maul AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1993834
Comments: 9
Kudos: 113





	Negotiator

The ship landed on the landing pad with the same amount of grace _Skywalker_ was known for. Mace’s surprise, therefore, when Ahsoka Tano bounded out with a quick close of the ship bay, scowling and cursing while wearing Mandalorian garb and storming towards them, was justified.

“Look, I don’t get it either, and I still don’t really know how I feel about this but the Order are the only ones who might be able to help me.”

Yoda, always soft to his own lineage, smiled at her. “Do what we can to help, we will.”

Ahsoka sighed, and it almost sounded like relief. Except Ahsoka was still tense, and now someone was pounding against the door to the ship bay. She pushed it down with the Force and Mace wondered what, exactly, the last member of Yoda’s lineage was about to drop on the Order. When a red-and-black tattooed man finally was let out of the ship, Mace wanted to turn around and tell her that, as a citizen, this was her problem. 

“Where is Kenobi?”

Maul.

“Calm your karking shebs _down_ ,” Ahsoka bit it out with the kind of frustration most Jedi usually saved for unruly padawans, for all the profanity it contained.

Not the tone one would think to use with a violent former Sith.

Mace had his saber out. Ahsoka had two at her hips and didn’t make a single grab for them. Her hands landed on her hips, certainly, but she shows no sign of being ready for a fight. And, to Mace’s surprise, Maul is cowed by that. He starts swearing under his breath, and he scowls in response, but his saber does not make its way to his hand and he crosses his arm.

“I picked him up on Mandalore and he won’t leave me alone.”

Mace kept his saber out and ready for battle. “You… picked him up?”

“I didn’t mean to, but we had bigger problems than him wanting to kill Obi-Wan and everyone he loves. Enemy of my enemy, and all that.” She waves. That is _not_ a very Jedi philosophy, but Mace can understand how, in the moment, it would be the option she would take. “And after we figured that out, he just stuck around.”

“You’re leaving out entirely too much.” Maul sneers. “I did _not_ go quietly into this.”

“I figured you would want to avoid the humiliation of sharing all the details.”

Maul is, once again, quelled by that. “Yeah. That’s fair.”

She shook her head. “So, Jedi, what do I do when a Sith follows me home?”

“You make it sound like you fed a wild Loth cat.” Mace… he hated to admit that at least Yoda’s lineage was never _boring_. And it certainly had been saddening when Ahsoka had felt she could not return to the Order, the only home she had ever known.

Mace did not like being the disciplinarian. However, he was able to retain strict control over himself, therefore he had the most training to maintain any control on the Order’s running. Yoda, for all the Order agreed to keep his public image in tact and his image with the younger members of the Order as well, had a lineage that stretched long and was blighted with Sith, contrarianism, and now a Padawan leaving.

Mace’s own hand in that last one was not to be ignored, but that no one in the lineage had, evidently, made the move to keep her there or to follow her…

Mace had brought it up once. There had been a tradition when a Padawan left to send someone senior in the lineage with them, or if no one in the lineage went then someone who was already something of a renegade, in case they decided to come back and to make sure they still had access to some kind of training. The Force was a powerful tool and being within the galaxy. Padawans were always so precariously placed, and they still needed guidance. The first time that was broken under Yoda was with Obi-Wan, when neither Dooku nor Yoda stepped up to protect the young man. 

Then they did it again to Ahsoka, whom they had already wounded. That tradition was still taught, the younglings still learned that even if they left, they would have up to three years standard with someone there to guide them and assist them. But the Jedi banished her, and when she left willingly they abandoned her.

“I… if I did, I didn’t mean to.” She shook her head. “But what do I do?”

Mace steps forward and puts his saber to his hip, a show of faith in Ahsoka and Maul. Her eyes are not yellow, like Maul’s still are (though there were spots of what looked like brown peeking through, when Mace glances towards him). She hasn’t, as far as they can tell, Fallen. But she has a Sith following her and responding as though, between the two of them, she has the authority. “Let’s take this into the Council chambers. I have a feeling this will be more complicated than a landing pad conversation.”

Ahsoka and Maul quietly bickered the entire way to the chamber. Maul looked ready to bolt once he was inside the Temple (and kark. Maul, a Sith, was _in the Temple_ ). Once they were in the Council chamber and waiting for other members to make their way there, Ahsoka and Maul took to sitting on the ground. Ahsoka was meditating, Maul was looking like a petulant, bored child.

“Ah, I don’t suppose we can help you?”

Obi-Wan walking in to see _this_ had every instinct in him flaring in the Force. Mace was ready to break up a fight, there was going to be some heavy healing needed after this, but of course Kenobi reacted to this with sarcasm. He had always responded to hurts from other Jedi with sarcasm after Melida/Daan. Maul glared at him, but Ahsoka opened one eye, the marking along her brow ridge quirking up. “Don’t.”

When Maul opened his mouth, it was not to threaten anyone’s life. “I didn’t think you were karking serious.”

“About?”

“Dragging me _here_ of all places.”

Ahsoka leaves her meditation completely. It’s a good move, on her part, to have even attempted it. Shows the Council at least some level of maturity, and Mace wonders at that. Of everyone in Yoda’s lineage, she was displaying a certain level of pragmatism and maturity that Mace had seen, recently, only in Obi-Wan.

Yoda had assigned her to Skywalker. Kenobi had petitioned for her, had helped with some of her training when her crechemasters and Clan master had decided she was too irritable and feisty. Mace could even understand – he remembered when Jinn took a former washout as a padawan. It had been quite the story. Obi-Wan saw something in her that no one had seen in him and had pulled her under his wing until Yoda had said to have Skywalker teach her. Everyone agreed, seeing them work together, that she was better suited toward Skywalker.

Even now, Mace wasn’t so sure.

“If you’re following me around, I’m at least finding out what I can do to keep you away from murder.”

Murder was a very low bar to set. Mace cleared his throat. “We cannot have a sith roaming free.”

Maul shot up and reached for his saber. “I’m not going down without a fight.”

“Yes you are.”

He growled at her. “What?”

She glared at him. “Look, you saved my shebs on Mandalore, and I’m trying to repay the karking favor. If you’re ready to throw your life away, well then I can’t very well help you, can I?”

Maul looked across the unamused Council. Mace could feel in Ahsoka a strictly light presence. There was nothing in her that was pushing to join the dark, to cloy with it even.

“The best we can offer is to stay on as a Jedi and have him as your prisoner.”

“Padawan.”

Ahsoka was always stubborn. A year away from the Code and still being a civilian, for all intents and purposes, has only strengthened that. Now he remembers the headaches.

“Excuse me?”

“I’m not calling him a prisoner, and I’m not making him one if I can avoid it. If I have to stay as a Jedi to keep you all from killing him, fine. But he’s my padawan. Even if he never turns away from the dark side, that at least keeps him under your authority, right?”

It’s a hard bargain worthy of Kenobi’s famed negotiation skills. Once again, he wonders if she shouldn’t have been assigned to a different master.

After the meeting, Mace prepares himself a stiff drink. They brought them into the fold, with the understanding there would be an investigation into what had happened on Mandalore.

He isn't sure he wants to know, really.


End file.
